"but if it sings, then it's right!"
dearest friends!
today, i would like to share some colors with you. the email title is inspired by the fantastic new lou stovall exhibition in the phillips collection. "i mix the colors intuitively," he says in a video demoing his silkscreen print technique, "but if it sings, then it's right."
i also send along james baldwin's letter to his nephew, highlighting this particular line: "We have not stopped trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other, none of us would have survived, and now you must survive because we love you..."
how time soars! happy august!
with love,
julie (from the meager wifi service of amtrak's famous northwest regional line)
—
+alma thomas's "The Eclipse" (1970):
+john singer sargent's "Fumée d'ambre gris" (1880):
+yangshuo mountains in guangxi:
+paul reed's "No. 12" (1965):
+paul klee's "Little Regatta" (1922):
+alicia eggert's "This Present Moment" (2019), gif version:
+arthur dove's "Waterfall" (1925)
+soap bubble microscopy (i saved this image in like 2015, obviously just for this moment):
+julia wachtel's "Rabbit Hole" (2020):
+gaudí's magnificent casa batlló in barcelona:
+john frederick peto's "Take Your Choice" (1885):
+low-tech vertical gardens at the ushuaia hotel
+lauren mabry's "Glazescape (Green Shade)" (2021):
+some of my photography from a couple years ago that i like the color palette of:
+lorser feitelson, untitled piece (1964):
bonus — chinmay’s response:
Hello everyone!
I hope that as all your summers trudge along to their end you can look back gladly over the months that seem to have disappeared all of a sudden, and look excitedly at the looming year! But if the places where you've all been scattered are as hellishly hot as Cambridge in August, perhaps excitement isn't the easiest emotion to conjure up right now — it definitely isn’t for me. Nevertheless, here are various bits of media that have managed to make me wonder at the world over the past few weeks:
“Against Neutrality about Creating Happy Lives” by Joe Carlsmith — Please don’t be turned away by the dry title; this is a serious contender for the Bit of Writing That Has Most Changed How Chinmay Sees the World Prize. The argument, in Carlsmith’s words: "creating someone who will live a wonderful life is to do, for them, something incredibly significant and worthwhile.” He's a philosopher, but I don’t suggest reading this as philosophy, but instead as a marvelous — even transformative — bit of introspective reflection and intuition-pumping. (But maybe that’s the way ethics should be done…)
"The Case for Longtermism" by Will MacAskill — As many of you know and are surely tired of hearing by now, I think that we should spend quite a bit more time thinking about the people and animals (and other morally-relevant exotic clumps of matter) that’ll be around long after we’re not. Some writing is illuminating because it shows you a bit of the world you’ve never seen, but some is because it makes something that’s incredibly obvious visible in a new light, such that its implications become newly clear. This op-ed is in the second group.
A few days ago I went on a Bach chorale prelude binge (don’t ask questions) and found myself unexpectedly struck by BWV 730 and 731. They’re settings of the same hymn tune, and are both relatively simple, especially the first. But there’s something incredibly heartbreaking, in a good sense, about them both, and I can’t quite pin down what it is. In any case, I recommend listening if you'd like to be slowly picked apart and then put back together again.
I’ve been listening to Berlioz’s Te Deum a lot lately. Gloriously strange music, beautiful and obsessive, and epic in the most literal sense.
For All Mankind — an alternative-history show that wonders what might have happened had the USSR won the space race. The scenes in space are really strikingly shot, the various political ramifications it explores are provoking, and of course hijinks in zero-gravity are lots of fun to see.
The Selfish Gene — An amazing book which draws only correct conclusions and none that are incorrect.
I hope you have wonderful Augusts, and I cannot wait to see you again soon!
Chinmay